SECURING MICROSOFT 365 WITH HARMONY SASE AND ENTRA ID

2SECURING MICROSOFT 365 WITH HARMONY SASE

The legacy enterprise network security perimeter is not gone, but it has been significantly reshaped. In addition to protecting offices and data centers, corporations have added the cloud, unmanaged devices, and large remote workforces. Protecting companies and their employees from malicious actors is now a battle over points spanning the cloud, on-prem servers, the web, and user devices. With employees accessing data and resources from within and outside the enterprise perimeter, it’s critical for identity and access management to focus on individuals and context, not locations and basic usernames and passwords.

So what does it mean to permit access based on individuals and context? This approach, known as Zero Trust, does not do away with the username and password. Instead, it augments it with other security measures so that only authorized people can access a given resource such as a database, server, or cloud application.

If a user wants to access a corporate database hosted in the cloud, for example, the user would first log in with a username and password. Then they would verify the login with a multi-factor authentication step to double check their identity.

Next, the system verifies that the user’s device meets company security requirements such as running the correct antivirus program or operating system version, checking for a custom security certificate, and other customizable features.

Finally, the Zero Trust system checks that the user has approved access to the database based on the company’s per-application access rules.

Today, Microsoft Entra Conditional Access is a common tool for implementing a Zero Trust network. This is especially important for offices heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem and Microsoft 365—formerly Office 365.

Entra Conditional Access and Identity Protection make dynamic access control decisions based on the user, device, location, and session risk for every resource request. It also combines attested runtime signals about the security state of a Windows device and the trustworthiness of the user session and identity to arrive at the strongest possible security posture before allowing access.

These access policies control how and when specific authorized users can access corporate resources. Granular access considerations include factors such as user role, group membership, device health, and compliance with Microsoft Intune for mobile device management (MDM).

Microsoft’s complete Zero Trust security model includes capabilities from Microsoft 365 and other parts of the Microsoft ecosystem including Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Entra ID, Windows System Guard, and Microsoft Intune.

Entra Conditional Access acts as the fundamental building block of Zero Trust security within Microsoft services, including Microsoft 365 and Azure. By making contextual access decisions based on user identity, device status, location, and session risk, it ensures that every resource request is evaluated dynamically. This approach leverages real-time signals about the security state of devices and the trustworthiness of user sessions to maintain a robust security posture

3SECURING MICROSOFT 365 WITH HARMONY SASE

Enhancing Entra Conditional Access with Harmony SASE Companies deploying Entra Conditional Access can significantly enhance performance and security for Microsoft 365 and other SaaS applications by integrating with Harmony SASE.

Harmony SASE secures all traffic between resources and users through our global private backbone, which reduces latency and enhances connection speeds compared to traditional public internet routes. Each gateway comes with a unique Private IP at no extra cost, which can be used for allowlisting with SaaS applications.

This means only traffic coming through the Harmony SASE network can login to your organization’s SaaS, this extra layer of security helps prevent unauthorized access from unmanaged devices or networks.

Our SaaS Security offering continuously monitors your Microsoft 365 deployment, detecting unauthorized access attempts, suspicious activities, and resolving misconfigurations—all from a single intuitive dashboard.

SaaS security can also discover unknown SaaS services that users may have connected to Microsoft 365 and show you the types of data the third-party applications can access.

Our preventative measures help stop data theft, supply chain attacks, and account takeover using behavioral indicators and threat intelligence.

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4SECURING MICROSOFT 365 WITH HARMONY SASE

Harmony SASE’s detailed activity reports provide insights into resource usage and bandwidth consumption, enabling you to optimize performance and plan capacity effectively. Our unified dashboard can monitor active connections and session information, giving administrators full visibility and control over network activity.

Discover how Harmony SASE can improve security for your Microsoft 365 environment and the rest of your SaaS deployment. Contact us today to learn more and take the next step towards a more secure, efficient network infrastructure.

Meet Harmony SASE 2x Faster Internet Security | Full Mesh Private Access | Secure SD-WAN The internet is the new corporate network, leading organizations to transition to SASE. However current solutions break the user experience with slow connections and complex management.

Harmony SASE is a game-changing alternative that delivers 2x faster internet security combined with full mesh Zero Trust Access and optimized SD-WAN performance—all with an emphasis on ease-of-use and streamlined management.

Combining innovative on-device and cloud-delivered network protections, Harmony SASE offers a local browsing experience with tighter security and privacy, and an identity-centric zero trust access policy that accommodates everyone: employees, BYOD and third parties. Its SD-WAN solution unifies industry- leading threat prevention with optimized connectivity, automated steering for over 10,000 applications and seamless link failover for uninterrupted web conferencing.

Using Harmony SASE, businesses can build a secure corporate network over a private global backbone in less than an hour. The service is managed from a unified console and is backed by an award-winning global support team that has you covered 24/7.

Harmony SASE is part of the Harmony for Workspace Suite. Harmony helps organizations of all sizes secure their workspaces with a suite of products covering network security across browsers, devices, and cloud.

To learn more, visit https://www.checkpoint.com/harmony/sase/ or schedule a demo.

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